President Bush's Woodrow Wilson Problem

Not many Americans outside the historical fraternity have heard of Philip Dru. Even among that well-informed group, not many are willing to admit the powerful role Philip Dru played in shaping the history of the twentieth century.

You may be nonplused to discover that Philip Dru is a character in a novel, Philip Dru, Administrator. It is not a very good novel. But its main character and his message acquired enormous significance when the author, Colonel Edward Mandell House, became the intimate advisor to the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.

Philip Dru tells the story of a military and political genius who took over a wealthy disordered quarrelsome nation and led it into an era of superhuman contentment by persuading the people to make him their supreme autocrat. This vision was not very different from Woodrow Wilson's view of how things worked best politically. In one of his books he wrote that the "graver questions" of politics, such as the choice between peace and war, could only be decided by "the selected leaders of public opinion and rulers of state policy."

Wilson maintained that in America the supreme leader of public opinion and most trustworthy architect of state policy was the president. Congressional government was a messy ultimately feckless process, to be avoided at all costs. It was easy to see how in Edward Mandell House's reveries, Woodrow Wilson became Philip Dru. Few historians have bothered to read Philip Dru, Administrator in recent decades. A close examination reveals a surprisingly militaristic side to Dru's approach to political problems. Although the details are submerged in murky generalities, Dru, a graduate of West Point, fights a large scale civil war with the forces of "privilege" before ushering America into an era of domestic peace and harmony.

Wilson's performance as president revealed a similar readiness to resort to military solutions. During his first term, he sent the U.S. Marines into Haiti and the Dominican Republic to support governments that had few backers outside of the business elite and their American friends. Wilson also used the threat of the Marines to make Nicaragua a virtual protectorate of the United States. To prevent the Mexican politician he disliked from acquiring guns from abroad, he ordered the U.S. Army and Navy to seize the port of Vera Cruz. The Mexicans resisted fiercely, and a day of fighting left 126 Mexicans and 19 Americans dead. Even the Mexican politician that Wilson was backing, Venustiano Carranza, denounced the invasion as a gross violation of the rights and dignity of the Mexican people.

This was the president who led Americans into the First World War in 1917 to make sure he had a seat at the peace table. Wilson assumed that America would not have to send any soldiers to Europe. Completely deceived by British and French propaganda, the president thought the war against Germany was as good as won. He was dismayed when British and French military missions showed up in Washington in May of 1917 and confessed they were on the brink of defeat. "We want men, men, men!" the generals said.

This is the sort of thing that can happen when the autocratic style pervades the presidency. Wilson seldom sought advice or information from anyone but Colonel House. His cabinet was a collection of mediocrities whom he rarely consulted. House had selected most of them. Philip Dru's autocratic style also pervaded Wilson's peacemaking. He seemed to think that the enunciation of lofty slogans was the equivalent of realizing them on a practical level. When he and House composed the famous "Fourteen Points" speech, stating the principles the world must accept to have lasting peace, the diminutive Texas colonel (an honorary title) told his diary with immense satisfaction: "Saturday was a remarkable day. We got down to work at half past ten and finished remaking the map of the world, as we would have it, by half past twelve o'clock."

Behind Wilson's back, the Europeans mocked his Fourteen Points. The French premier, Georges Clemenceau, sneered that God had been satisfied with ten commandments. At the Paris Peace Conference, Clemenceau and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George overrode Wilson's objections and wrote a vengeful peace treaty that sowed the seeds of World War II. It was poor compensation for the 120,139 Americans who had died in World War I.

Back in the United States with a treaty that almost every liberal in the U.S. Senate denounced, Wilson became a veritable incarnation of Philip Dru. He refused to compromise with anyone on his version of the League of Nations, which required America to surrender its sovereignty to the world government.

When the Senate rejected the treaty, Wilson tried to overwhelm his opponents with oratory on a nationwide speaking tour. In Pueblo, Colorado, he collapsed with a cerebral thrombosis. After a partial recovery, he forced the Democratic Party to make the 1920 presidential election "a great and solemn referendum" on the peace treaty. By this time the American people were thoroughly sick of Woodrow Wilson, his war and his peace. The Democratic candidates, James Cox of Ohio and Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, were buried in one of the greatest landslides in American history.

Philip Dru was repudiated but his legacy remains a constant temptation in America's foreign policy. Too many people -- both supporters and critics of President George W. Bush -- seem to think that America can or should achieve instant democracy and respect for human rights in nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, simply by proclaiming our faith in these principles. Unless we flavor our idealism with a large dose of realism -- and patience -- we may find ourselves a very disappointed nation, again.